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i have been reading a lot of old articles and posts on here and am a little puzzled about the sizes of the wheels compared to the weights. I use 20+ gallons in every recipe and always end up with a 12-18 lb cheese that is either 8" in diameter and 5-8 inches high or 12" in diameter and 3-5 inches high. (I am only referring to cheddar because the one colby I made was way bigger but it was full of whey and a real disaster.) I have looked at pics of other cheddars here, and alot of folks are producing 7 to 8" cheeses that weigh only 3-4 pounds. Are my cheeses too dense? What should a 8" across, and 6" deep cheddar  weigh? Or an even better question: how many pounds of cheddar should a gallon of milk produce if the solids are somewhat average? Hope someone knows.

You are right on target.  A good rule of thumb for cheddar yield is 10%.  You are using 20 gallons, or 172 lbs. of milk.  You should yield around 17.2 lbs. of cheese.

Thank you for the input mpolobear. Welcome to the forum!

I usually get about 3/4 of a lb of cheddar per gallon of whole, raw milk, so I think you are right on target, too.

I'd love to see pics of your set up for such huge batches of cheesemaking, if you'd like to share.

I posted some here https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,2246.0.html and in my introduction here https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,2205.0.html

I hardly ever buy anything so it looks like something off of junkyard wars.

Great photos - thanks for posting the links, as I somehow missed them earlier.  Not "junkyard wars" - it's just farmer ingenuity.  Recycling before it became a fad with the rest of the world.

Yes great photo's.  Somehow I missed all that.  Congrats on the 10 kids too. I only have 8, which seems to cause most people to faint when they find out.

Anyway really great set up you have there.  You should be proud of it.

i was named after my great grandfather who also had 10 - 6 boys and 4 girls just like me. Kind of freaky to have exactly the same name and family; I even named my boys after his sons, too. I am the grandson of his 10th so for me to argue against having ten kids is to argue against my existence.

Well at least your family is used to large families.  No one can whinge to you about having lots of kids.